WPR14CA387 · Beech E33A
Beech E33A · Accident: ground collision while standing
From North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT) to North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14CA387
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Beech E33A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 33
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N15RJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT), Las Vegas, NVTo North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT), Las Vegas, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1968)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Standing · engine(s) start-up
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Ground collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner/pilot had recently purchased the high performance, complex airplane, and he wanted to have another pilot accompany him while he familiarized himself with the airplane's flight and operational characteristics. He contacted a flight instructor, who was referred to him by another individual, to fulfill that role. Based on discussions with the owner, and the owner's significant number of flight hours, the instructor planned to perform in the role of safety pilot, as opposed to providing instruction. The airplane was parked in a row of aircraft that was separated from another row of aircraft by a strip of pavement about 60 feet wide. The airplane pitch and roll flight controls were of the "throwover" design, where there was only one yoke, which could be shifted to either the left or right cockpit position. The right cockpit position was not equipped with brake pedals. The owner took the left seat, while the safety pilot took the right seat. The owner's preflight and pre-start procedures all seemed normal and uneventful, and did not give the safety pilot any reason to more closely observe or doubt the owner's abilities. According to the safety pilot, the engine started "very aggressively," increased to a high rpm, and the airplane immediately began moving rapidly forward out of its parking spot. Once the safety pilot realized that the airplane was accelerating towards the row of airplanes on the other side of the pavement, he moved his left foot over and tried to apply the brakes, in part by stepping on the owner's right foot. After the airplane had traveled about "10 to 15 feet," the safety pilot also fully retarded the mixture control to cut the engine. The airplane continued across the ramp, and struck a parked, unoccupied airplane. The parked airplane received substantial damage to its fuselage and wing structure. The left wing of the accident airplane was substantially damaged. The safety pilot recalled that prior to and during the engine start, the throttle control appeared to be in a sufficiently retarded position for engine start, but the owner reported that he had positioned the throttle control inappropriately for engine start. Postaccident examination of the throttle control system did not reveal any mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's incorrect engine start procedures, which included improper throttle position and failure to keep the brakes applied, which resulted in a loss of directional control and subsequent collision with a parked airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14CA387
- Event ID
- 20140925X83755
- Case number
- WPR14CA387
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 701d484fc70968647689c34d648098883a7c6188ac806e3906a9db151f7fb117; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:48:12.803Z.